Baked goods for everyone! Tiffani Thiessen has been staying busy while quarantined amid the coronavirus pandemic by cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
While the 46-year-old Alexa & Katie alum, who runs her own food blog, loves both sweet and savory meals, there’s one dish she’s recently been whipping up over and over again with her 10-year-old daughter, Harper — banana bread.
“I know people joke, ‘How many banana breads have you made?’ And during the pandemic, and I feel like we’ve been probably [baked] about a hundred,” Thiessen told Us Weekly on Friday, July 17, while promoting her Sensodyne and Pronamel partnership.
“[Harper] just made another one the other night,” the Saved by the Bell alum added. “She really loves to cook with me.” (Thiessen also shares 5-year-old son Colt with husband Brady Smith.)
While banana bread, which has become a quarantine favorite, clearly reigns supreme in Thiessen’s household, the star makes use of some of her own homegrown foods as well.
“We [cook] a lot of things,” she explained. “We actually grow a lot of fruits and vegetables here, which has been really fun with the kids. We’ve made tomato tarts and grilled pizzas … we’re always constantly making something. It’s been a lot of fun to have them at home and involved in that.”
Another treat that the White Collar alum loves to make with her little ones, especially in the summertime, is ice cream. “All through the summer we always usually do a new ice cream every week,” Thiessen told Us. “It’s something that kids love to do. It’s a fun activity … especially when you’re indoors and there’s some enjoyment out of it.”
For the California native, ice cream is even more appealing now that she’s teamed up with Sensodyne and Pronamel and addressed her “sensitive” teeth. “I couldn’t enjoy citrus and being from California, that’s a huge thing. [I couldn’t enjoy] ice cream and things that are cold or hot,” she told Us. “So when I got introduced to Pronamel years and years and years ago, it completely changed my life.”
Additionally, all the cooking Thiessen has been doing with her kiddos has actually inspired her to start writing her second book. “I’m working on a kid’s cookbook, which is super exciting just because we’re doing that a lot right now,” she said. “I thought I had another idea for the second book, but this seems to push that one away … I know a lot of Harper’s friends are cooking. Like, they’re just enjoying being at home and it’s been really fun doing that with Harper, so it just seems more natural to do that.”
While Thiessen admitted that Smith, 48, “doesn’t cook at all,” it appears Harper has taken after her mom in the kitchen. “She actually is doing really good. Her knife skills are getting really good,” the Northpole star told Us. “She’s getting confident. It’s all about confidence when it comes to the kitchen!”
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
